"Please, for the love of god, pre-order one. We're begging you. You there, in the suit. You could use an Xbox One, right? I mean... it runs Windows 8. Kind of. You could use Office 365! And... and... Kinect for Excel is going to be awesome.

Actually this would be awesome. Would be a lot easier to convince the boss to buy one.. and then also be a nice "break/time off" thing to do at lunch or something to get your mind off work for a little bit.

He has a point on the video conferencing. It probably best any of Cisco's conferncing stuff on pricing by a fair amount.

Yeah, but only if all the people you use it to vid-conf with are also using it, or Skype.

I've seen this sort of "this would be great for all those peons in small business" crap for years and it's stupid every time. I'm an independent IT guy with hundreds of clients, most of whom are small businesses. I have 1 (yes, ONE) that has any interest in video conferencing, let alone a need for it. Small business isn't conducted the way large business is and thus has different needs, albeit with some overlap. Too many folks in IT don't recognize this and think if they can push a solution "big business" uses, it'll make a small business big. Too many small business folks think the same thing but in my 11+ years doing what I do independently, I've seen most ofd the "I am small but wanna be big" guys die off while the "I'm OK with being small" guys keep making enough money for their needs.

Yeah I can totally see businesses jumping all over themselves to use a video conferencing center that blasts Doritos ads at them at startup. "Hey, is that a video game console you're conducting the merger meeting on? " does not scream professionalism either.

If this is true, why doesn't Microsoft just make a Kinnect-based video conferencing device. Then we wouldn't have to worry about people sneaking into boardroom to play games, or maybe borrowing it for the weekend.

Yeah I can totally see businesses jumping all over themselves to use a video conferencing center that blasts Doritos ads at them at startup. "Hey, is that a video game console you're conducting the merger meeting on? " does not scream professionalism either.

gotta love that ol' corporate tunnel vision. they look at the camera, and say, "it's videoconferencing hardware." they look at the dashboard, and say, "it's a discovery (advertising) platform." no one realizes those two things don't work well together.

it's like that old saying about three blind men feeling an elephant: one feels the leathery skin and says, "it's rhino!" another feels the tail and says, "it's an armadillo!"

I don't know how accurately people estimate and declare these things, but that's the rule anyway.

I'm sure Microsoft will make it really easy to see this data, right? It's easy to put a timer on stuff, so I'm sure Microsoft will come through and log all of this in a transparent way.

Yeah but the NSA might make it happen involuntarily.

On that note, I do not think that Microsoft has made a case to buy this over alternatives. What else could $500 get you in terms of similar capabilities business telecommunicatons hardware? And why should the end business want a Xbox over those alternatives? Until a solid case is made for that, we won't see much uptake.

I was actually considering doing this. We've been throwing around a video conferencing system here at work. only catch is I'm not getting a gold subscription for each location. gonna have to wait and see if that is required.

Unless they are planning on adding in full blown server hardware and software and allow inclusive support for said gear then they are blowning smoke up their own pipes.

Ballmer should not be heading up MIcrosoft.

Just read an article today about how he just now decided to reconsidate and resctructure management at Microsoft to reign in all of its various ilconceived projects and isolated products. My question is why has that taken them so long to figure out and somehow the psoting of this article (not ARS fault) seems to contradict the other article.

...While on the other hand, no one that I'm aware of has had a tax problem with claiming a PC as a business expense, even if it is the best game platform under heaven. You see...the advantages to PC ownership accrue endlessly...

Holy crap, I just thought about how much Lifesize costs these days, and he may be right. An Xbone with Skype would be way more cost-effective than LifeSize and handle the same job for smaller deployments.

By the bye, it's you've never used LifeSize, it's the bomb for teleconferencing. It's the first time I actually felt like I was in the room with people. I even used it to play D&D with an out of town friend.